El siguiente artículo toma como punto de partida al concepto de industria cultural desde sus principales exponentes, para exponer sus usos actuales. Este nació como concepto filosófico como parte de la obra de los autores representantes de la llamada Escuela de Frankfurt, Theodor Adorno y Max Horkheimer, con valiosos aportes de Walter Benjamin. En la actualidad ha mutado su definición, siendo utilizado de manera instrumentalpor parte del Estado y organismos internacionales, para definir al grupo de sectores de producción cultural y (...) simbólica de acuerdo a sus parámetros económicos. En este sentido, desde aquél concepto de industria cultural de los años cuarenta podremos ver que hay un recorrido en el cual se van transformando las posturas acerca de lo que el arte y la cultura posibilitan. La función social del arte va escondiéndose detrás de su inmersión cada vez más visible dentro de la producción mercantil, si bien en los últimos años la cultura aparece como motor de desarrollo económico e identitario. Esta transición será ilustrada con el caso argentino, dando cuenta de los cambios en el sector. The following article takes as its starting point the concept of Culture Industry from its leading exponents, and exposes its current uses. The Culture Industry began like a philosophical concept, as part of the work of the Frankfurt School authors, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, with contributions of Walter Benjamin. Nowadays, this concept definition has mutated, being used instrumentally by the state and international organizations, to define the cultural and symbolic production according to economic parameters. In this sense, paying attention to that idea of Culture Industry, we can see that there is a path in which the possibilities of meanings of art and culture are changing. The social function of art is subordinating behind the commodity production, although in recent years the culture appears as an engine of economic development and identity. This transition will be illustrated accounting for changes in the sector in the case of Argentina. (shrink)

We examine the question of material agency as raised in material engagement theory (MET). Insofar as MET tends to highlight the causal roles played by extra-bodily material flows in human practices, the term “material agency” does not sufficiently distinguish cases in which these flows are part of an agentive engagement from cases in which they are not. We propose an operational criterion to effect such a distinction. We claim this criterion is organizational, i.e., systemic, and not causal. In the enactive (...) account, agency requires three organizational conditions: self-individuation, interactional asymmetry, and normativity. These conditions can have organic, sensorimotor, and sociomaterial realizations. The dance of human productive practices is indeed spread between brains, bodies, and the world, as MET claims, but it is distributed in an organized manner that involves constraints and norms at various scales. We put forward a relational and non-anthropocentric perspective toward an enactive approach to productive practices. We discuss some aspects of agentive ensembles rendered more intelligible by our proposal, including incorporation, soft assembly and non-decomposability, and the grounding of teleology normative processes at multiple scales. In this manner, we seek to continue the dialog between MET and enactive theory, beginning with the view that a situated system must realize certain minimal organizational conditions to be called an _agent_. (shrink)

Este trabajo analiza la producción editorial en los conglomerados globales de la edición en Argentina. Sus trayectorias y perfiles profesionales, la forma en que encaran la producción editorial, el marketing y la gestión editorial, entre otras cuestiones, contribuyen a dar cuenta de elementos comunes. Entre esos elementos comunes se encuentra el imperativo de publicar y vender libros, propio de los grandes grupos editoriales, la conformación de un editor de tendencias y lo que analíticamente podemos pensar como la conformación de un (...) ethos que combina elementos que hacen al reconocimiento de “un buen editor” y que están presentes en una formación profesional que se entrecruza con diferentes experiencias en el desarrollo vital y concepciones de lo individual. Allí entran en tensión mecanismos opacos de “inspiración” o “intuición” creativa, con la lógica empresarial que busca transparentar mecanismos de producción de un éxito de ventas y se combinan en lo que los editores identifican como “olfato comercial”, que implica adaptaciones y regulaciones en distintos niveles de la práctica profesional y personal.El trabajo se basa en los resultados de investigaciones en curso que, mediante un abordaje cualitativo, buscan analizar diferentes formas de producción, circulación y usos de bienes “creativos” entendiendo que en tales circuitos se encuentran implícitas particulares nociones de la subjetividad. (shrink)

This article is part of the period of methodological expansion, proposed by the philosopher Arturo Roig (1922-2012), in the 70's and 80's. Although the analysis of categories is rooted in the philosophical field, this expansion is made in the direction of social categories. More specifically to the categories of “civilization” and “barbarism”, both in the field of the history of ideas and in the philosophical history of Latin American liberation. First, we give different definitions and their multiple uses of category (...) in philosophy. Subsequently, we analyze the category of “human dignity”, one of the arms of the very broad anthropological a priori category, systematized by the thinker from Mendoza. Then we disaggregate the proposal of a categorical rearmament, which has among its multiple functions: the rescue, criticism, replacement, reworking and integration of categories that have been forgotten, distorted, dehistoricized and decontextualized. The categories of “civilization” and “barbarism” have generated a semantic ordering of the discursive universe in Latin America. We review different theses proposed by Roig, in the historicization of the assessment -both negative and positive- of the category “barbarism” that different thinkers in Latin America have expressed. Among them: Juan Montalvo, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, José Hernández, Juan Bautista Alberdi, Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, among the main ones. (shrink)

This paper reformulates some of the questions raised by extended mind theorists from an enactive, life/mind continuity perspective. Because of its reliance on concepts such as autopoiesis, the enactive approach has been deemed internalist and thus incompatible with the extended mind hypothesis. This paper answers this criticism by showing (1) that the relation between organism and cogniser is not one of co-extension, (2) that cognition is a relational phenomenon and thereby has no location, and (3) that the individuality of a (...) cogniser is inevitably linked with the question of its autonomy, a question ignored by the extended mind hypothesis but for which the enactive approach proposes a precise, operational, albeit non-functionalist answer. The paper raises a pespective of embedded and intersecting forms of autonomous identity generation, some of which correspond to the canonical cases discussed in the extended mind literature, but on the whole of wider generality. In addressing these issues, this paper proposes unbiased, non-species specific definitions of cognition, agency and mediation, thus filling in gaps in the extended mind debates that have led to paradoxical situations and a problematic over-reliance on intutions about what counts as cognitive. (shrink)

A novel theoretical framework for an embodied, non-representational approach to language that extends and deepens enactive theory, bridging the gap between sensorimotor skills and language. -/- Linguistic Bodies offers a fully embodied and fully social treatment of human language without positing mental representations. The authors present the first coherent, overarching theory that connects dynamical explanations of action and perception with language. Arguing from the assumption of a deep continuity between life and mind, they show that this continuity extends to language. (...) Expanding and deepening enactive theory, they offer a constitutive account of language and the co-emergent phenomena of personhood, reflexivity, social normativity, and ideality. Language, they argue, is not something we add to a range of existing cognitive capacities but a new way of being embodied. Each of us is a linguistic body in a community of other linguistic bodies. The book describes three distinct yet entangled kinds of human embodiment, organic, sensorimotor, and intersubjective; it traces the emergence of linguistic sensitivities and introduces the novel concept of linguistic bodies; and it explores the implications of living as linguistic bodies in perpetual becoming, applying the concept of linguistic bodies to questions of language acquisition, parenting, autism, grammar, symbol, narrative, and gesture, and to such ethical concerns as microaggression, institutional speech, and pedagogy. (shrink)

The idea of inclusive collective decision-making is important in establishing democratic legitimacy, but it fails when citizens are excluded. Stated-preference methods of valuation, which are commonly used in economics, have been criticised because the principle of willingness to pay may exclude low-income earners who do not have the capacity to pay. Deliberative valuation has been advocated as a way to overcome this problem, but deliberation may also be exclusive. In this review, two deliberative valuation frameworks are compared. The first is (...) grounded on the idea of rational discourse that emphasises argument at the expense of other communicative strategies. It seeks to secure inclusion through procedural rules and prerequisites, but fails to address the underlying democratic limitation of argumentation. The second does not rely on the distinction between rational and rhetorical speech, and therefore admits alternative forms of communication. This approach recognises differences in the communicative capacities and practices of those who take part in deliberation, and so is better equipped to improve, though not to guarantee, inclusion. (shrink)

In this article I criticize Hannah Arendt's concept of natality as unable to confront the ways in which racial capitalism links the biopolitical cultivation of natality to the necropolitical natal alienation that is structural to modern slavery. I base this argument in an understanding of social death as the production of racial capitalism, one that gives slavery an aftermath, post-abolition, which continues to dispossess Black and brown people of their capacity to begin something anew via their inclusion into juridical personhood. (...) I conclude this article with an articulation of the political impossibility of Black and brown people to begin something anew under a polis that remains structured by racial capitalism in Ralph Ellison's phenomenological description of the invisible man's misrecognized new beginnings with the Brotherhood. (shrink)

RESUMEN La teleosemántica es el intento de naturalizar el contenido mental mediante el recurso al concepto de función biológica. En el presente artículo se argumenta que la teleosemántica carece de los recursos necesarios para hacer frente a tres problemas: la indeterminación del contenido, el carácter abstracto de este y la inutilidad biológica de algunas de las representaciones que pueden albergar organismos como los humanos. ABSTRACT Teleosemantics is the attempt to naturalize mental content by resorting to the concept of biological function. (...) The article argues that teleosemantics lacks the necessary resources to solve three problems: the indeterminacy of content, its abstract nature, and the biological uselessness of some of the representations of certain organisms such as human beings. (shrink)

Reseña del libro Como el papel secante con la tinta. La teología inversa en Walter Benjamin y Theodor W. Adorno (2022), de Stefanie Graf.

Biosmiotics is trying to extend semiotic concepts to biological phenomena and demarcate the biological sphere from the non-biological sphere using the applicability or inapplicability of semiotics as the demarcation criterion. We could call it antireductionsit in the first part of its enterprise as the world of life is interpreted in quasi-human terms; and we coulld call it reductionist in the second part of its enterprise as, for example, causality is excluded from the semiotic sphere. This article promotes a view according (...) to which applicability of semiotic concepts cannot serve as a demarcation criterion to partition reality plainly because the extensions of the concepts of semiosis, cogntion, subjectivity, and -- surprisingly -- causality, coincide. Both positive and negative lessons will be taken from Jakob von Uexküll's ideas by both developing and criticizing them. (shrink)

En su reflexión, Andrés Monares se hace las preguntas de fondo respecto de los argumentos éticos, económicos e incluso religiosos que justifican el rechazo al neoliberalismo. Recurriendo a la pregunta de ¿quién puede ser neoliberal?, recorre los diferentes aspectos de esta doctrina, adentrándose en sus orígenes como parte de una teología protestante, y su posterior transformación en ideología económica y social.

Morally progressive social changes seem to have taken place with the onset of democratic governance, the abolition of slavery, the rise of gender equality, and other developments. This essay attempts to demonstrate that natural and objective moral facts are a plausible cause of some morally progressive social changes. Since this hypothesis is a version of naturalistic moral realism, I call it the Naturalist-Realist Hypothesis. To support the NRH, I argue that objective moral facts are natural facts pertaining to the impartial (...) promotion of well-being within a population of agents facing a social dilemma. I then describe a mechanism to explain how natural and objective moral facts so construed may cause some morally progressive social changes. I suggest that the NRH is a credible hypothesis because it is compatible with empirical findings from research on the evolution of moral cognition and on the sociology of mass political movements. (shrink)

Many word forms in natural language are polysemous, but only some of them allow for co-predication, that is, they allow for simultaneous predications selecting for two different meanings or senses of a nominal in a sentence. In this paper, we try to explain (i) why some groups of senses allow co-predication and others do not, and (ii) how we interpret co-predicative sentences. The paper focuses on those groups of senses that allow co-predication in an especially robust and stable way. We (...) argue, using these cases, but focusing particularly on the multiply polysemous word ‘school’, that the senses involved in co-predication form especially robust activation packages, which allow hearers and readers to access all the different senses in interpretation. (shrink)

This article addresses the importance of passions and their component of pain and pleasure in Aristotle's ethical reflection. Then, and assuming these antecedents, it analyzes anger and calm from the point of view of Rhetoric, to finally deal with the other painful passions described in this work in a broader way, in search of common aspects. He argues that Rhetoric provides important tools not only to provoke or mitigate a passion, but also to be able to redirect it in a (...) way that is useful for a good speaker in the face of citizen improvement. This implies conceiving the passions, which have an eminently individual character at their origin, also as shared by a community. From the analysis of these texts and the consequences that derive from the study of painful passions, it is possible to extract valuable elements that allow us to enrich our understanding of those aspects that influence community and political life, especially in consideration of the forefront that such passions are acquiring in difficult historical conditions, as it occurs in practice with the current pandemic situation that we have had to face globally. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to provide a critical examination of Berlin’s treatment of positive freedom by offering a review of his standard arguments against this concept. Throughout his essays and particularly in “Two Concepts of Liberty” Berlin connects the idea of positive freedom with such notions as monism, rationalism, and determinism. Each of these connections will be discussed separately. I will argue that most of Berlin’s arguments against positive liberty are somehow flawed. Although Berlin valued positive freedom as (...) one of the ultimate ends of life, his critical view of the concept should be tempered and contextualized since it was mostly based not on logical or conceptual grounds but on historical and interpretative considerations. (shrink)

The book is an undergraduate-level introduction to first-order logic and proposi­tional modal logic. The book presents symbolic logic in a way that is pedagogi­cally attractive and formally rigorous. The main concepts are formally defined, in­formally explained, and illustrated with several examples. The book is aimed at philosophy majors and it includes discussions of several problems in the philosophy of logic.

El presente artículo examina las diferentes teorías del contenido mental de Dretske y su relación con sus consideraciones epistemológicas para concluir que el hecho de conceptualizar o albergar un determinado contenido es ya un tipo de conocimiento, a saber, conocimiento animal. A continuación el autor discute dicho enfoque sosteniendo, a diferencia de Dretske, que mantener la dicotomía entre conocimiento animal y conocimiento reflexivo resulta virtuosa pues mantiene tanto aquello que puede ser naturalizado apelando a la Historia natural como da razón (...) de las practicas justificatorias que intervienen en el denominado conocimiento reflexivo y que a su juicio es irrenunciable e irreductible. (shrink)

El presente artículo examina los argumentos aristotélicos en favor de la teleología para poner de manifiesto su estructura argumentativa que, a juicio del autor, es una inferencia a la mejor explicación. Finalmente se intenta relacionar la estrategia aristotélica con el tratamiento actual que se ha hecho de la finalidad desde la Filosofía de la Ciencia.

This paper tries to simplify the situation in modern epistemology, where the scientific method seems to be accomplished by different scientific methodologies. this is partially done by asserting that the popperian critical methodology can be seen as a special case of bayesianism. to this effect, it is firstly argued, that popper's corroboration degree measures the probabilistic support that evidence lends to universal hypotheses. then it is affirmed, that popper and miller have not established the impossibility of inductive probability. and it (...) is finally claimed, that bayesian probabilistic support encompasses popper's corroboration concept. (shrink)

Some versions of moral naturalism are faulted for implausibly denying that moral obligations and prescriptions entail categorical reasons for action. Categorical reasons for action are normative reasons that exist and apply to agents independently of whatever desires they have. I argue that several defenses of moral naturalism against this charge are unsuccessful. To be a tenable meta-ethical theory, moral naturalism must accommodate the proposition that, necessarily, if anyone morally ought to do something, then s/he has a categorical reason to do (...) it. Versions of moral naturalism that deny this claim would, if widely believed, disable some crucial practical uses of moral concepts. In particular, if the existence of normative reasons for action is taken to be dependent on agents’ desires, it would breed profound skepticism about the legitimacy of evaluating others’ actions from a moral point of view. Also, it would raise doubts about whether people ought to correct their own behavior in light of moral considerations. Following Richard Joyce, I take these consequences to indicate that the concept of a categorical reason is a “non-negotiable” part of moral concepts. (shrink)

Since it implies a reduction in the quality and the quantity of the natural resources, environmental degradation is a present day problem that requires immediate solutions. This situation is driving firms to undertake an environmental transformation process with the purpose of reducing the negative externalities that come from their economic activities. Within this context, environmental marketing is an emerging business philosophy by which organizations can address sustainability issues. Moreover, environmental marketing and orientation are seen as valuable strategies to improve a (...) firm's competitiveness. However, the literature that has analyzed the link between environmental strategies and firms' results has been inconclusive and contradictory. In this study, we propose and test a model that analyses how the implementation of ecological issues within a firm's marketing strategy and orientation influences organizational results. Data were obtained through a survey sent to Spanish manufacturing firms. The results show that environmental marketing positively affects firms' operational and commercial performance and this improvement will influence their economic results. Moreover, environmental marketing is revealed as an excellent strategy to obtain competitive advantages in costs and in product differentiation. Thus, this study agrees with the researchers who affirm that environmental strategies positively affect firm's competitiveness while reducing environmental impact. (shrink)

Several authors have made claims about the compatibility between the Free Energy Principle and theories of autopoiesis and enaction. Many see these theories as natural partners or as making similar statements about the nature of biological and cognitive systems. We critically examine these claims and identify a series of misreadings and misinterpretations of key enactive concepts. In particular, we notice a tendency to disregard the operational definition of autopoiesis and the distinction between a system’s structure and its organization. Other misreadings (...) concern the conflation of processes of self-distinction in operationally closed systems and Markov blankets. Deeper theoretical tensions underlie some of these misinterpretations. FEP assumes systems that reach a non-equilibrium steady state and are enveloped by a Markov blanket. We argue that these assumptions contradict the historicity of sense-making that is explicit in the enactive approach. Enactive concepts such as adaptivity and agency are defined in terms of the modulation of parameters and constraints of the agent-environment coupling, which entail the possibility of changes in variable and parameter sets, constraints, and in the dynamical laws affecting the system. This allows enaction to address the path-dependent diversity of human bodies and minds. We argue that these ideas are incompatible with the time invariance of non-equilibrium steady states assumed by the FEP. In addition, the enactive perspective foregrounds the enabling and constitutive roles played by the world in sense-making, agency, development. We argue that this view of transactional and constitutive relations between organisms and environments is a challenge to the FEP. Once we move beyond superficial similarities, identify misreadings, and examine the theoretical commitments of the two approaches, we reach the conclusion that far from being easily integrated, the FEP, as it stands formulated today, is in tension with the theories of autopoiesis and enaction. (shrink)

How accurate is the picture of the human mind that has emerged from studies in neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science? Anybody with an interest in how minds work - how we learn about the world and how we remember people and events - may feel dissatisfied with the answers contemporary science has to offer. Sensorimotor Life draws on current theoretical developments in the enactive approach to life and mind. It examines and expands the premises of the sciences of the human (...) mind, while developing an alternative picture closer to people's daily experiences. Enactive ideas are applied and extended, providing a theoretically rich, naturalistic account of meaning and agency. The book includes a dynamical systems description of different types of sensorimotor regularities or sensorimotor contingencies; a dynamical interpretation of Piaget's theory of equilibration to ground the concept of sensorimotor mastery; and a theory of agency as organized networks of sensorimotor schemes, as well as its implications for embodied subjectivity. Written for students and researchers of cognitive science, the authors offer a fuller view of the mind, a view better attuned to the experiences of people who live, work, love, struggle, and age, thrown into a world of meaningful relations they help create. Additionally, the book is of interest to neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and philosophers of science. (shrink)

Este artículo tiene el propósito, en un primer momento, de dilucidar la noción de religión y mito en Friedrich Hölderlin, contrastándolo con el concepto de religión racional de Kant. En un segundo momento, se comparará la concepción de este poeta con algunos estudiosos del tema religioso posteriores a él. Además, se sostiene que la reflexión sobre la religión que realiza Hölderlin es vigente, pese a su poca influencia en los análisis actuales del fenómeno.

This article intends to analyse the Hobbesian version of the Christian dogma of the Trinity as it is observed in the corresponding sections of Leviathan , De Cive and Heresy , and alluded to in other texts (controversy with Bramhall). It shall be important to specify: (a) As a starting point, the exact place of such concept within the general problem expressed by the difference between "political theology" and "theologico-political problem" (C. Altini); (b) The main items of the philosopher's Trinitarian (...) exposition as well as his intention while writing it, according to the "secularist", "theistic" and "Divine Omnipotence" interpretations. (J. Overhoff, A. Martinich, P. Springborg, L. Foisneau, F. Lessay, G. Wright); (c) His relationship with the contemporary orthodox currents (Trinitarian) and heterodox currents (antitrinitarian), as well as with the elements from ancient antitrinitarian heresies (subordinationism, modalism, sabellianism). (shrink)

Leibniz’s treatment of contingency proceeds by degrees and develops in parallel to the systematizations of his thought. In the time about the Confessio Philosophi, he sustains the idea of contingency on the possible as such, in the hypothetical necessity and in the divine creation. In the years previous to the systematization of the Discours de Métaphysique(1680-1686), Leibniz defends the idea of contingency through the following factors: the complete notion of substance, the infinite analysis of the truths and the first decree (...) of the divine will. (shrink)

There may be few works of philosophy that accurately integrate dialectical and rhetorical aspects such as Contra Academicos, to the point that it becomes difficult at times to separate these two discursive techniques. This, despite the tension that Augustine points out between, on the one hand, his impulse to move away from the vanity of the rhetoric he learned in his youth, and, on the other, its convenience in achieving the persuasion of his audience. Regarding rhetoric, there are two moments (...) in which it is clearly recognizable in the work: 1) Direct references to “persuasion” and to technical elements specific to oratory; and 2) The implementation of a rhetorical discourse, in this case necessary and not accidental, to complete the argument. In this article, I analyze both aspects systematically, in order to investigate the reasons why this Augustinian dialogue invokes, to achieve its objective, both dialectic and rhetoric. (shrink)

This article will first give an account of Mou's judgment of the transcendental character of Huayan School by tracing his understanding of the doctrinal relationship between the “One Mind Opens Two Doors” in the Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna and the “Simply True Mind” of Huayan School. Second, Mou's interpretation of “the co-dependent origination of tathagatgarbha” of Huayan School will be analyzed so as to identify the sense in which Mou considers that the teaching of Huayan School is perfect. (...) This will be explicated in detail in the second and third parts. However, Mou's interpretation of the “Perfect” Doctrine of Huayan School draws our attention to the fact that the “distinctive” ontological explanation of all dharmas in Huayan teaching is different from that of the Tiantai School. Mou argues that the Huayan School is not the final and authentic “Perfect” Doctrine of Buddhism. In the fourth part we will discuss this in detail. Finally, does Mou's transcendental interpretation do justice to the Huayan School? Wing-cheuk Chan (Chen Rongzhuo inline image) criticizes such a reading as a mere step toward a proper understanding of the dialectical essence of Huayan School. We will introduce this in the last part of this article. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the idea that there is a sense in which it is meaningful and useful to talk about objective understanding, and that to characterize that notion it is necessary to formulate an account of explanation that makes reference to the beliefs and epistemic goals of the participants in a cognitive enterprise. Using the framework for belief revision developed by Isaac Levi, I analyze the conditions that information must fulfill to be both potentially explanatory and epistemically valuable (...) to an inquiring agent and to a scientific community. To be potentially explanatory, the information must state the relations of probabilistic relevance that the explanans bares to the explanandum. But a potential explanation con only be a bona fide explanation if it becomes part of inquiry, that is, if an agent or a group of agents can see any value in it for their cognitive purposes. I provide a way to evaluate the epistemic value of a potential explanation as a function of its credibility and its informational content. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to discuss the philosophical viability of the incommensurability doctrine. In particular I am going to analyse the thesis that changes in meaning of the terms shared by competing theories after a scientific revolution imply reference changes as well. The idea that terms change radically their meanings will be discussed, and the alleged incommensurability of mass will be criticized in detail. Relativity theory, which has provided most of the characteristic examples of incommensurability, becomes also the (...) realm in which to put to the test the viability of this doctrine. My own proposal on incommensurability amounts to restricting its validity to the domain of worldviews, and last to the theoretical vocabulary. I finally suggest that the incommensurability problem disappears in the framework of an instrumentalist point of view on theories and theoretical models From this viewpoint such worldviews become merely useful tools in order to deal with Nature. (shrink)